Portrait exhibition illuminates rural students in segregated South and the little-known man who gave them a chance

When Ann Smithwick and her husband moved to west Tennessee, several of her new neighbors dropped by to let her know she had just moved into their school.

It had been some decades since the 70, 80 and 90-somethings had set foot in what was once their little school house, but Smithwick's neighbors, the subjects of a new portrait exhibition at the Birmingham Museum of Art, still kept one of the South's hidden civil rights legacies.

Her new house had been built in the 1920's by Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, who partnered with Booker T. Washington to bring education to black children in the pre-war South, constructing more than 5000 schools in 15 states. When Smithwick learned the story of her own house, she set out to preserve the Rosenwald legacy through photographic portraits of the former students.

"Rosenwald Revisited," which opens Thursday, features the portraits Smithwick captured using a 1920's Kodak box camera on platinum palladium plates.

"[The technique] evokes very much a sense of
dignity, pride and humility among my subjects," Smithwick said. "I'm just a vehicle to help the story to be told through what I know best, photography"

Smithwick said her house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in the early 2000's, and an effort to identify and protect the old Rosenwald schoolhouses has been growing over the past several years. But for the photographer, preservation meant following leads and knocking on old students' doors.

"My home was in a sense their other home. It was a place
for them to come together and there was so much joy in that structure, and they
were exuberant to tell their story."

The process demanded lengthy sittings
for what a modern devices could have snapped in seconds, but Smithwick believes it captured more than just the students' faces. She recalls the
session behind exhibits first portrait, "Pearlie Mae."

"The exposure time was quite long when I would photograph
them, so they had to sit for a length of time without moving, but she chose to
sing," Smithwick explained. "I think that in that one image you certainly feel her
large presence because she was in the midst of basically prayer while she was
being photographed."

The images in Birmingham Museum of Art will be larger, digital
reproductions of the original 8X10" images first displayed in the National Civil
Rights Museum in Memphis. The show is sponsored by investment firm Vulcan Value Partners which Smithwick's longtime friend C. T. Fitzpatrick founded when he came to Birmingham seven years ago.

Though Smithwick's subjects live in Tennessee, Fitzpatrick said he brought her photographs to Alabama to help illuminate the civil rights legacy of his new city.

"We really were very encouraged with the progress the city
of Birmingham has made, and we really wanted to tell that story."

Fitzpatrick admits that the city's civil rights legacy and
the 50 Year's Forward campaign are not already without a retinue of corporate marketing
opportunist. But he said most of his clients aren't actually in Alabama, and in
this case, the company - which is also making a donation to Birmingham educational nonprofit Bridge Builders Alabama - really does want to do something good for Birmingham.

"We have people from Europe, Africa, Australia, very large institutions,
and they always ask us, 'Why are you in Birmingham?'" he said. "Sometimes they
might have a negative stereotype from the past and after they spend time here
they're like, 'Ok, we get it. This is great.'"